For the last few weeks I have been tidying up the UK database and combining duplicate records. This is now completed and so I have started adding additional records to the database. A further 50 Lefever names have been added, some of whom were still alive in the 20th century.

One interesting person in this update was Jim Lefevre born in March, Cambridgeshire. His father and siblings mainly worked on the Great Eastern Railway. He was an agricultural labourer who married and moved to Islington in London where for a few years he was a policeman. He then returned to Cambridgeshire and worked on the railways for a short while before becoming a publican (a regular job for retired policemen). I will try and do some research to find out about his police service in the coming months.

I have had a couple of contacts from people researching the Lefevre name in North America and will hopefully be adding some of their data shortly.

I now have today added the first 15 records to the French LeFever page on this site. Rather than being new data this is data split out from the other country pages and displayed on this page on the site.

There are some significant challenges in researching LeFever and variants in France. Firstly the name is very common in France and secondly there is no central repository of French Birth, Marriage and death records which makes remote research somewhat challenging. As a result I only intend to add French data as it becomes available to me rather than making it an active research country.

If anyone wants to volunteer to do any research in France or any other country for that matter I would like to hear from you.

Today I have added another 21 records to the US database. These are mainly records for the LeFevre family from New Platz. The information is derived from the details of documents stored by the Huguenot Historical Society. My thanks go to them for making this data from their paper archives readily available. One interesting record in this set is that of the marriage of Josiah P. LeFevre in 1836 to, presumably a relative, named Elizabeth LeFevre. This is certainly a record to find out more detail about.

I am still trying to track down a copy of ‘The Pennsylvania LeFevre’s’ book for delivery to Spain. So if you come across one please bear me in mind.

Today I have added the first of the US records available to me. This means that there are now 68 LeFevre’s from the US on the site.

My thanks go to James Miller for allowing me to use the data from his website and to add this to the growing collection of LeFever’s around the world. Unfortunately the email address for James is not working on his website and so contact can only be through the guestbook on his page.

I thought that it would be good to get a copy of ‘The Pennsylvania LeFevre’s’ book by Newton LeFevre to catch up on a few more of the US LeFevre’s. Amazon US has two copies available from independent suppliers as this book is long out of print. Unfortunately neither of them will ship the book to non US countries. In the 21st century this is very frustrating, when will supplier realise that if they advertise on the internet there will be potential customers from outside their own country wanting to buy their products?

I have added an additional 36 record to the GB data file today. They are mainly from the late 1800’s.

A few interesting facts that I found whist recording this latest update.

Emma Lefevre born in about 1821 in Hampshire in a large country house called Heckfield Place. In the 1891 census she was a 70 year old spinster employing 13 staff to look after her and the house. The house is currently (2012) being converted into a 70 room luxury hotel.

In Sunderland on the night of the 1891 census there was a visiting French ship the Alice Depeaux from Rouen and its captain was a Frederic Lefevre.

In Bedfordshire in 1891 Marie Lefevre 14 years old and her sister Angela 13 years old are employed as school teachers. I have heard of starting young but they would have only left school a couple of years before.

In this latest update there were several Lefevre’s born in France and so I will add their details to the FR data shortly.

After a few weeks of research I have just added another 35 individuals to the GB Lefevers page. I have tracked down a small clump of them living in Scotland mainly in Aberdeen in the 1840’s and 1850’s. This is the first trace that I have found of the name in Scotland.

The website has been updated with the latest version of software and now marriage details are being shown correctly where they weren’t before.

I have received some initial data from a lady in Canada who is descended from Louis Lefebvre who was born in France probably in the mid 1600’s.

As a result I have published a new Canada page with this initial information. Hopefully I will be able to get some more details from her and other Canadian Lefebvre’s to add to this branch of the name.